In video shot this morning, Keene District Court’s Judge Edward J Burke tells Cop Block Radio‘s Eric Freerock that he’ll accept his thirty-one community service hours as certified by the Shire Free Church. (He volunteered to record hours of panels and speeches at a recent event.) However, Burke warns Freerock that one is not supposed to do community service for agencies with which one is affiliated. That makes no sense. Why wouldn’t one be able to do community service for an agency one has already supported previously?
If one has worked previously at say, the Community Kitchen, does that mean one is “affiliated” and cannot perform community service hours there? Or does “affiliated” mean that one is on a board of directors of said organization? That is not made clear during this hearing, and the community service order that courts issue to defendants says nothing about a prohibition of affiliation with an agency. Regardless, Burke accepts the hours. Case closed.
Cody Wilson has a unique relationship to the intellectual property that he has been developing for the past few years. He has designed three dimensional, printable plastic firearms accessories and essential parts, including rifle lower receivers, extended magazines, and the first functional printed plastic pistol, known as the Liberator. However, intellectual property laws in the United States prevent him from being able to directly share these designs with the world. While courageous others risk fines or jail time for hosting the schematics independently, the information produced by Defense Distributed is essentially illegal. The reason for this is that the IP laws unique to munitions technology specifically state that all intellectual property related to munitions are deemed to be under the ownership of the US military. As a crypto-anarchist, Cody is interested in neither profiting from nor restricting the sharing of his designs, yet his wishes as the product’s creator are rebuked by federal statute so as to place an artificial limitation on the advancement of the technology. Despite the restrictions and the uses of intellectual property laws to limit the free flow of information and media, Defense Distributed continues to stand for the right of producers to share their created items freely, understanding that ultimately ideas cannot be owned. The above interview was filmed on 22 February 2014 at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Nashua, New Hampshire. (more…)
Last month, myself and Darryl, as ministers of the Shire Free Church, contributed a check in the amount of over $1,400 to the “City of Keene” for services we value, that are not coercive in nature, such as road maintenance. We specifically left out of the check the amount of money the city was demanding for the government school system.
Instead of sending money to a system based on coercion of our peaceful neighbors, we have chosen to send $1,000 instead to a peaceful school that does business by consent, the Monadnock Waldorf School. People have asked how schools can be funded without the state – it’s easy. One method is to pick the school(s) you like and send them the money the state system would have otherwise taken from you. Let the market decide how money should be distributed, not centralized bureaucracy that gets their funding by threat of stealing homes.
This is not a property tax revolt. Churches and their parsonages are not supposed to pay property tax, even under the state’s system. The city people sent a year-end property tax bill to the home I used to own that I donated this summer to the Shire Free Church, and we used the amount of money demanded on that bill as suggested amounts to calculate what we would actually give for the community services we value.
Whether the people calling themselves “the City of Keene” will recognize the Shire Free Church’s freedom of religion and cease sending property tax bills to the church’s parsonage remains to be seen. We delivered their exemption form (the BTLA-9) to the city assessor this week, as a courtesy, not because we feel the church is in any way obligated to the rules of their coercive system. Stay tuned here to Free Keene for the latest.
Yesterday, Darryl W. Perry and I went and paid a visit to the “City of Keene” building and cut them a check for valued services provided, but forbade them from using the money to aggress against peaceful people. Here is a video Darryl shot just after the check was delivered to “the City”:
To our neighbors calling themselves the “City of Keene”:
Greetings! This letter is in response to the letter sent to us on 2013-09-19 by Daniel J. Langille, “City Assessor”. In his letter, Mr. Langille references your society’s statutes (RSAs) and seems to suggest that they somehow apply to the Shire Free Church. The Shire Free Church is not part of your society. Your society is based on coercion, and as a peace church, we cannot be a part of a group that uses coercion against peaceful people. (more…)
Robin Hood of Keene, in solidarity with the city, will attempt to expand the holiday week of free downtown parking in Keene, New Hampshire by an additional day. In an effort to not annoy holiday shoppers, City of Keene will not demand change from drivers parked at metered parking spaces from December 18th though December 25th. Robin Hood’s Merry People will be saving driver’s from parking tickets from 9:00AM to 5:00PM on Tuesday, December 17th.
This is the first time that Robin Hood of Keene and City of Keene have partnered together to help drivers and downtown Keene based store owners. If this test run works well, Robin Hood of Keene and City of Keene may partner together in future endeavors.
The Police Accountability Tour had the opportunity to meet with the creative individuals behind CopWatch of East Atlanta. Having been active in their area since the late aughts, the project established itself as a resource for the community, providing a phone number for people in need of a few individuals armed with cameras to reach out through. Following an experience-based set of collectively understood policies, CopWatch participants are also involved in other actions in the area, including Food Not Bombs.
A pixelated still image from footage damaged in police custody
Stemming from an incident in 2010, and complimented by a similar situation which occurred later, the Atlanta police department has now been specifically trained to permit videography and photography of themselves and their suspects and detainees from a reasonable distance. During the 2010 camera seizure, which helped shape CopWatch of East Atlanta’s policies as well as the police’s, a camera phone was taken from an activist by the police after multiple unlawful requests to terminate the recording. Eventually, the camera was wrestled away, and a revealing phone conversation with the property-seizing officer was documented and disseminated. The officer revealed that the person potentially videotaped being arrested may act as a confidential informant on an investigation. The camera phone would be returned on the condition that the police employee could be granted access to the footage and ensure its deletion. An audio recording of the telephone conversation would secure a $40,000 settlement for the group. Upon retrieving the footage, it was posted publicly in very damaged condition, possibly as a result of its poor handling in police custody, or through intentional sabotage. Since that time, CopWatch of East Atlanta has adopted policies to prevent the loss of objective documentation of a scene by working in groups, wearing uniforms, keeping distances between videographers, and observing numerous other safety precautions. Recently at the DeKalb County public library, the group offered to the public a know-your-rights training session. (more…)
